A Good Sport

If you ask me to go for a run with you or join in with a game of Rounders I would politely decline. I am not very sporty. I am not sporty at all, in fact. That doesn’t mean, however, that I am not a good sport. If you were to ask me to help with your charity event I would do what I could. If you asked me to bake a cake for your charity event, then I would probably be planning it in my head before I had even come to the end of, “Yes, I’d be delighted to.”

When my colleague asked if I would bake a cake to be raffled off as part of the school’s fundraising for this year’s Sport Relief I was more than happy to help out. For Comic Relief last year I made a Red Velvet Cake as I felt the colour tied in with the charity’s logo. This year I stepped away from chocolate and went fruity instead.

I decided to use one of my favourite recipes from Ruth Clemens, behind The Pink Whisk. She is just such a lovely woman and her recipes are always so reliable. In this case it was her Raspberry Ripple Cake that I baked. I have made it a few times as a traybake in the past and thoroughly recommend it.

The cake itself is a light sponge swirled with a fresh raspberry purée. The two layers are sandwiched together with a combination of cream cheese, double cream, icing sugar and the same raspberry purée, and it is so delicious and light.

On the outside I made a regular buttercream but flavoured it with raspberry and some freeze dried strawberry pieces. I have never used the flavouring before and was very pleased with the flavour that it gave. Next time, I would blitz the freeze dried strawberries for 30 seconds in a blender in order to make them a fraction smaller, but I did want visible pieces to be thought the icing.

I coated the cake with the icing and chilled it for an hour before decorating it.

I had previously prepared some fresh strawberries with a drizzle of melted white chocolate; a relatively easy yet effective decoration. I also coloured some white chocolate red with a fat soluble colouring for the first time. I added a couple of drops of the raspberry flavouring for the hell of it, and set it aside in a disposable piping bag.

Once the cake was firm to touch I drizzled the red chocolate on the top of the cake to emulate the strawberries, but in reverse, then arranged the fresh fruit on the top along with a few white chocolate truffles. I gave it a final sprinkling of edible sparkles and stopped there.

I hope it raises lots of money for a worthy cause. At least I know that whoever wins it will be one of my friends that I work with. I have included a recipe for the buttercream at the bottom of the post.

Fruit is just so beautiful. I guess taking your time about how you place it will help to achieve a better result. I think some people think these informal cakes are just thrown together, but you have to get some kind of balance. X